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In brief: The FAA joined the rest of the world in grounding the entire U.S. fleet of Boeing 737 MAXs following a second deadly crash involving the plane; Wednesday was the deadline in the state legislature to pass new legislation out of its house of origin; high schoolers from around the region walked out of class in support of climate change action; SPS was criticized for suggesting its Muslim students eat during Ramadan; and the monorail will start accepting ORCA cards this fall. 
Sunday, March 10th - Saturday, March 16th, 2019
Image from The Los Angeles Times / Jemal Countess (Getty Images)
Last Week in Seattle
Boeing crash:
  • Last Sunday a brand new Boeing 737 MAX crashed shortly after takeoff in Ethiopia, killing all 157 people aboard, just months after another brand new 737 MAX crashed into the sea in October shortly after taking off from Indonesia, killing 189 people. 
  • Most countries around the world were quick to ground their entire fleets of 737 MAX planes shortly after the crash, with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the U.S. becoming the lone holdout by the middle of last week, initially following Boeing's lead in refusing to ground the U.S-based 737 MAX fleet until the pressure to do so became overwhelming and the FAA eventually announced on Wednesday that it was doing the same, as evidence began to emerge that the same issue was likely at play in both incidents.
  • The nutshell version of what appears to be the problem is that the 737 MAX has larger, more fuel efficient engines that slightly unbalance the plane and cause it to pitch upwards in some situations, so engineers designed an automated system (called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS) to automatically detect that upward pitch and compensate by bringing the nose back down...but both of the recent crashes appear to have been caused by that system malfunctioning and driving the planes into the ground/sea instead. 
  • Dominic Gates at The Seattle Times looked at Boeing's strong stock market performance prior to the Ethiopia crash, and the fact that CEO Dennis Muilenberg made a record $30 million last year; and The Stranger's Charles Mudede suggested that there may be a link between Boeing's aggressive moves in recent years to reduce its labor and operating costs in order to increase profits for its shareholders and the fact that it now has brand new airplanes falling out of the sky. As political economy professor T.M. Sell put it in an op-ed for Crosscut, "this is Boeing, the company that spent millions to move its headquarters to Chicago so it could lay off anybody anywhere and not run into them in the grocery store. This is the company that spent nearly $1 billion to open a second 787 production line in South Carolina, so it could save $9 million a year in labor costs and stick it to the Machinists Union...Boeing will fix this problem, if only because there are still a lot of good people in Renton and elsewhere who understand that what they do affects people’s lives. But in the longer term, the company may have to make some choices about its direction and how it operates, choices that really shouldn’t be so difficult."
The housing affordability crisis:
  • KUOW's Kate Walters looked at the story of a man whose paycheck was delayed due to the snowstorm last month and ended up being evicted from his low-income apartment as a result, and Capitol Hill Seattle looked at a bill that's still alive in the state legislature to extend the "pay or vacate" period for renters who are past-due on their rent from the current 3 days to 14 days instead. 
  • And Real Change's Ashley Archibald looked at the ideological conflict between self-governed homeless tent and tiny home encampments and City funding that's increasingly focused on gathering tangible data about outcomes, through the lens of a disagreement between Nicklesville and the Low Income Housing Institute. 
Election Watch:
  • Erica C. Barnett pored through the Public Disclosure Commission database to put together a list of the candidates who have raised the most money in each of the City Council districts.
  • City Council candidate Ari Hoffman in District 2 helped amplify a completely made-up story about a homeless man beheading people with an axe in southeast Seattle (Hoffman is closely associated with the group Safe Seattle, which opposes tiny home villages, safe injection sites, and increased funding to build new permanently affordable housing, and has engaged in some pretty questionable tactics in the past, including an effort several years ago to publicly map the locations of people living in tent encampments and RVs citywide).
  • King County Councilmember Jeanne Kohl-Wells announced that she does plan to run for re-election, after transit advocate Abigail Doerr announced that she'll be challenging Kohl-Wells for her seat. 
  • Mayor Jenny Durkan announced a new libraries levy that will almost double the size of the expiring levy, going to $213 million from $123 million. The new money would be used to expand library hours of operation, pay for seismic retrofits in Columbia City, Green Lake, and the U District, beef up the library system's digital offerings, and eliminate late fees for overdue books. The levy will appear on this August's primary ballot after it's approved by the City Council.
  • And The Stranger's Eli Sanders continued his crusade to get Facebook to abide by Washington state's laws governing election ads. 
Meanwhile, in Olympia:
  • Following Wednesday's cutoff for lawmakers to pass bills out of their house of origin, the Seattle Times looked at which bills made it past the cutoff and which ones didn't.
  • Among those that are still alive are measures that would create a public healthcare option for state residents, increase the smoking age to 21, require presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to be able to appear on the ballot in Washington, ban plastic bags, keep the state on daylight savings time forever, prevent parents from exempting their kids from vaccines, formally eliminate the death penalty, reduce evictions, make it easier for cities to build tiny homes, and reform the state's sentencing guidelines.
  • The list of bills that won't be moving forward includes an effort to create an independent state office to review sexual harassment complaints; an assault-weapons ban and a ban on high-capacity magazines; and a limitation on public disclosure requirements for members of the legislature. 
  • And the legislature has already passed, and Governor Inslee has already signed into law, measures to amend the police accountability legislation that was passes last year as I-940 to update it according to an agreement between the initiative team and law enforcement officials; move the state's presidential primary up from May to March next year; put ballot drop boxes on tribal reservations if requested; and allocate money towards a bump-stock buyback program that was passed last year but never funded. 
Real Estate Corner
With the City Council set to pass a sweeping package of upzones tomorrow that will allow taller building heights in 27 urban villages across the city, Daniel Beekman at The Seattle Times wrote a series of articles on the legislation's potential impacts:
  • Following a lobbying campaign by local businesses on University Way NE in the U District, the City Council agreed to grant "The Ave" a temporary reprieve from inclusion in the package.
  • Rainier Beach, which has seen less development than many other parts of Seattle in recent years, could see a spike in redevelopment near its light rail station.
  • And based on the City's calculations, the portion of the upzone legislation that requires developers to either build affordable housing or pay into a fund that can be used to do the same will result in the creation of 2,986 new units of affordable housing over the course of the next 10 years, and when taken together with upzones from 2017 the total number will be just over 6,000 new units.
While the local real estate market is getting much busier for the spring like it always does this time of year, there are signs that this year's spring rush may be more favorable for buyers than it has been in previous years.

The Seattle Globalist looked at the construction of a low-income senior housing project that's being built by the Filipino Community of Seattle (which is the name of a non-profit that serves Seattle's Filipino community).

Gene Balk reported that "[f]or the second consecutive year, the number of driver’s licenses issued to new King County residents from out of state declined, according to records from the Washington Department of Licensing."

Curbed Seattle's Sarah Anne Lloyd looked at what $1,100/month will rent you around the city. 

And while I don't usually plug my listings in the newsletter, one of them was featured in Curbed Seattle last week! 
Thank you to everyone who's sent me a real estate referral or used me as an agent yourself! The city of Seattle is my geographic area of expertise, and while I'm also very good at helping sellers get top dollar for their homes, my true passion is helping first-time homebuyers get homes that they love quickly and easily.

I
f you need a residential real estate agent to help you buy or sell a home of any kind--or you know someone who does--I'd love to be of service. My website is here, or see here for client reviews. 
Quick Takes
Starting March 23rd--that's this upcoming Saturday--all of the buses that currently run in the downtown transit tunnel will move to the streets instead, with only light rail trains remaining in the transit tunnel. [The Stranger]

Starting in September you'll be able to pay for rides on the Seattle Center monorail using your ORCA card. [Seattle Transit Blog]

King County inquests into fatal shootings by law enforcement officers have been piling up since County Executive Dow Constantine put the process on hold two years ago to look into making changes to it to remove pro-officer bias. [Crosscut]

Following the mass shootings by a white supremacist at mosques in New Zealand, local law enforcement officials worked with local mosques to increase security. [Seattle Globalist]

Seattle Public Schools received a lot of backlash from parents and the Muslim community after an elementary school principal asked Muslim parents to consider allowing their children to eat during Ramadan in order to keep their test scores up on standardized tests mandated by the state, which partially overlap with the Islamic holy month. [Crosscut]

KING 5 looked at the cases from public schools around the state of autistic students who were severely traumatized by being physically restrained at school. [KING 5]

Hundreds of Seattle-area students walked out of class Friday afternoon to demand more government action to combat climate change. [Seattle Times]

State Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued the three largest distributors of prescription opioids in the state for their role in causing the opioid crisis. [Seattle P-I]

Hannah Weinberger looked at a DIY biotech lab in the U District that's open to the public. [Crosscut]

The Mountains to Sound Greenway, which runs from Seattle to Ellensburg, was designated a National Heritage Area. [Seattle Bike Blog]

Marcie Sillman looked at the story behind those bronze dance steps on the sidewalks of Capitol Hill, which were one of the first public art projects to result from Seattle's "1% for the arts" policy. [KUOW]

Seattle's Veterans Administration (VA) hospital will open a brand new, state-of-the-art expansion building this week. [Seattle Times]

Sound Transit's CEO raised the possibility of hiring non-union drivers for several Sound Transit Express bus routes between Seattle and the Eastside, raising concerns from labor leaders. [Seattle Times]

And the destruction of the viaduct continued unabated... [Seattle Times]
Upcoming events this week
3/19, 7:00 pm: Salon of Shame

3/21, 6 - 8 pm: News & Brews: Regulating Big Tech [Crosscut]

3/21, 8:00 pm: The Seattle Moth GrandSLAM

3/23, 12:00 pm: Duwamish Princess Angeline Native Tea Party

3/23, 1 - 3 pm: Holi Festival of Colors 2019 [Phinney Neighborhood Association]

3/23 - 3/31: Seattle Jewish Film Festival

3/24, 7:00 pm: That's Debatable: Technology Will Save Us [KUOW]

Sol Villarreal
Broker, Windermere Real Estate
sol@windermere.com
solvillarreal.com
206-765-6108
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1177 Fairview Ave N
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